A/N: Thank you, as always, to those who have taken the time to review this slightly odd story. Really very much appreciated. And a special thanks to MissyHissy3 for beta reading on a Sunday morning!

Nineteen

I've got a lack of inhibition
I've got a loss of perspective
I've had a little bit to drink
and it's making me think
That I can jump ship and swim
That the ocean will hold me
That there's got to be more
than this boat I'm in

Swandive – Ani di Franco

Tom was waiting with B'Elanna. They were standing just outside the door nearest the stage, out of sight of the people who had now filled the seats around the tables. Kathryn had taken to the podium first, her clear voice calling order on the inevitable hubbub in the room as she'd spoken. She hadn't commanded the room's attention for long – Tom knew that Janeway didn't want to risk tiring their patience before B'Elanna's presentation – but what she'd said about the garden had been intriguing enough to catch the imagination of the audience. She'd introduced Chakotay, who was up there now. That meant there was less than five minutes before the girl standing beside Tom had to take his place.

He could see that B'Elanna was wound as tight as could be. Her hands were curled into fists as she watched Chakotay. Nerves weren't something he'd usually associate with her, but right now B'Elanna looked as if she were sinking beneath the weight of them. He hated to see her so anxious.

"Hey," Tom whispered, touching her arm lightly.

B'Elanna almost jumped out of her skin, jerking her head around to look at him.

"Sorry," he said. "Are you OK?"

"I don't think I can do this," she said, in a hoarse whisper. "I can't go up there. Look at them all! There are so many people."

"You'll be fine," he told her. "It'll be over before you know it, and then we can have some fun. OK?"

B'Elanna shook her head, backing away from the door slightly. In another moment he was sure she was going to turn and run. "I can't, Tom. I just can't."

Tom reached out and took her hand. "It's all right." He bit his lip, trying to work out what to do. They had just minutes before the stage would be empty. He looked out onto the floor, hoping to catch Kathryn's eye, but her attention was fixed on Chakotay. "OK. Look. If you really don't think you can do it… I'll do it for you."

B'Elanna blinked. She was squeezing his hand, hard. "What?"

"I'll say you've been taken ill, or had a family emergency, or something. Your notes are up there, right? And I've seen you do the presentation. So…" he took a deep breath. "I'll do it. I won't do it as well as you would – and most people out there think I'm a loser so they won't listen as well as if it were you speaking, but-"

"But?"

"But I don't want them not to hear it at all. Not after you've put so much work into it, B'E. Not when it's such a brilliant idea."

She stared at him. Out on the stage, Chakotay was winding up to introduce her. B'Elanna was still holding onto Tom's hand. "Tom-," she said, and stopped.

"Yes?"

B'Elanna shook her head. "I'll do it. I'll do the presentation."

Relief exploded in his chest. "Really?"

She took a deep breath and shrugged. "Can't have some scrawny white boy showing me up to his rich friends, can I?"

Tom couldn't help but laugh. "That sounds more like it."

Chakotay's voice carried her name to them from inside the room. "And now, I'll turn the stage over to B'Elanna Torres… Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen, and enjoy your evening." His last words were followed by an enthusiastic wave of clapping.

"This is it, then," Tom said, quietly. "Knock 'em dead, B'Elanna Torres."

She let go of his hand and went to step out of the door. Then she paused. For a split second Tom thought she was going to change her mind again and make a run for it. B'Elanna turned, looking up at him. Her dark eyes were so beautiful, he thought. Then she quickly stepped closer, lifted herself up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his, just for a moment. Tom was so taken by surprise that he didn't have time to react.

"For luck," she whispered, as she pulled away just as quickly.

Tom watched her walking to the stage, surfing a fresh tide of clapping from the audience. He knew the grin on his face was so wide that he probably looked even more of an idiot than usual. He didn't care. Not even slightly.

B'Elanna got to the podium and looked up at her audience. He saw her take a deep breath. Then she smiled, and began to speak.

Chakotay watched B'Elanna's presentation with pride. She spoke clearly and concisely, punctuating her statements with supporting facts and using the slides to illustrate her ideas. Looking around the room, he could see that she was holding her audience's attention. Here and there pairs of glasses had been taken out and put on in order to better see the screen. Several seemed to be taking notes.

It made him a little emotional, actually, to see her speak so eloquently to such a room of people. When she'd landed on the doorstep of his gym more than a year earlier, his priority had been to channel her temper into something productive that would enable her to stay in school. He'd seen pretty quickly that B'Elanna had a potential beyond just graduating high school, although in their neighbourhood just that would be a considerable achievement. But it had taken a chance encounter with an idealistic woman and an unruly, privileged teenage boy to truly utilise it.

Chakotay glanced across the table. Kathryn was sitting opposite him, leaning back in her chair and watching B'Elanna with rapt attention. He was struck again – though not quite as hard as he'd been the first time he'd seen her this evening – by just how beautiful she was. Everything about her seemed to glow, as if she was lit from within. He watched for a second as she smiled at something B'Elanna said, the gesture creasing lines at the corner of her eyes.

He suddenly became aware that his attention had been noticed. Kathryn's sister was seated beside her, and Phoebe was watching him. He met her eye briefly and returned the slight smile she gave him. Kathryn had introduced them earlier, and he'd immediately formed two impressions. The first was that the younger Janeway sister had a decidedly mischievous air and the second was that he'd taken her by surprise, somehow. The latter of these things he couldn't fathom and she covered quickly with a host of genuinely interested questions about his work at the gym and his involvement with the project. Chakotay liked her, and got the feeling that she liked him. This should have been inconsequential – after all, it wasn't as if they were likely to meet again after this evening – but for some reason it pleased him.

B'Elanna concluded her presentation to a standing ovation. Chakotay stood, clapping hard. He felt a hand on his arm and looked down to find that Kathryn had appeared beside him, beaming widely.

"She was wonderful!" she shouted, her voice almost lost beneath the tidal wave of applause that was still crashing around them. "Even better than I thought she would be. Come on – let's go talk to her before she's surrounded by everyone else!"

He found himself being tugged through the crowds and to his shock realised that Kathryn had slid her hand down his arm to lace her fingers through his. Unreasonably flustered, he looked around and found himself glancing back to the table. Phoebe Janeway was looking studiously down at her glass, another smile on her face.

Dinner was delayed because so many of the attendees wanted to talk to B'Elanna. The wait staff hovered at the edges of the room, anxiously trying to gauge when to begin serving. Kathryn took a moment out to stand back. She was on cloud nine as she watched B'Elanna, Tom and Chakotay all fielding questions about the invention and the project as a whole. All in all, the evening was going better than she'd ever dared hope, certainly better than any other charity gala Owen Paris had staged for her. She looked over at the man in question, currently part of the circle surrounding B'Elanna and Tom. She made a mental note to talk to him about his son when he was free. He should know just how instrumental Tom had been in the success of this evening.

"Well," said a voice close to her ear. "At least now I understand why Mark was suddenly in such a rush to set a date for the wedding."

It was Phoebe. Kathryn turned to her with a frown. "What are you talking about?"

Her sister raised her eyebrows and pointedly directed her gaze across the room to where Chakotay was chatting with someone before looking back at Kathryn. "Show me a fiancé alive who wouldn't be threatened by that chunk of manhood."

"Stop it," Kathryn chided with a hiss. "Someone will hear you."

Phoebe shrugged. "Tell me I'm wrong."

"You are wrong. More than that, you're being ridiculous."

"Am I? You're seriously trying to tell me that you working alongside the most astonishingly beautiful man I've ever seen had absolutely nothing to do with it?"

"They haven't even met. And why would it make a difference anyway?"

Phoebe looked interested. "They haven't met?"

Kathryn shrugged. "Why would they? Has Karl met all of your work colleagues?"

"Er – most of them, yes. The ones that I work closely with on a regular basis, at least. And I've met his, too. You've met most of Mark's peers, haven't you? You've been working on this for months now – planning it for years. You're telling me Mark's never met any of the people involved?"

"He already knows Owen and Tom. And he's been away, hasn't he? And it's not as if there's any reason for him to visit the site itself anyway, is there? It's really not his field."

"No, but it's yours," her sister pointed out. "And what you actually mean is, despite how important this project has been to you for years, Mark just hasn't shown any interest in the day-to-day of your work, or any willingness to help out. Unlike Chakotay…" Phoebe raised her glass to her lips and looked back across the room towards the man in question. "Christ, he's gorgeous. I think I just spontaneously ovulated. Or maybe it was something else. Good job I'm wearing Spanx."

"Pheobe!"

"What?"

"Stop it!"

"Stop what? You can't tell me you haven't had exactly the same thought at least once. I refuse to believe it. Even my ramrod straight older sister can't be that shut off from reality. Admit it. You've had at least one dirty thought featuring Coach Chakotay."

Kathryn felt her cheeks colouring and took a hasty mouthful of her wine. "You little wretch. One, I'm knocking forty, not fourteen. I am no longer ruled by my hormones. Two, I'm getting married in six weeks. So what on earth would it say if I had?"

Phoebe drained her glass. "Well, I know what I'd say. Hallelujah. But knowing you, you'll see having feelings you can't control as some terrible failing of character and attempt to pretend they don't exist instead of examining the possibility that perhaps – just perhaps – you're with Mark for the wrong reasons and about to make yourself unbelievably unhappy."

Kathryn briefly shut her eyes. "Please don't," she said. "Not here, not now. Not tonight."

Phoebe sighed. "All right, all right. But I'm just going to point out one more tiny little thing."

"What?" Kathryn hissed.

"Chakotay hasn't taken his eyes off you all evening. Even when he's looking at someone else, he's thinking about you."

She knew what Phoebe was saying was absurd – it always was, for goodness' sake – but still Kathryn's heart seemed to turn over in her chest. "Will you please just-"

"Look!" Her sister gave her a sharp elbow in the ribs. "See?"

Chakotay chose that moment to look away from the person he was talking with. His gaze swept the room and she thought he was just surveying the crowd. But then he found her amid the throng and stopped. He smiled and Kathryn felt the floor tilting slightly beneath her feet.

"Good job you didn't buy a new dress after all," Phoebe whispered into her ear. "If he ends up ripping that one off you later at least you won't have wasted a ton of money."

"Phoebe!"

When dinner was finally served, B'Elanna found that she was starving. Everything this evening had happened so fast that it all felt like a blur. She couldn't even really remember giving her presentation, or most of what had happened immediately afterwards. So many people had been asking her questions. Some had insisted she call them so they could talk further. One – a man called La Forge who spoke as if she should know who he was – had straight out offered her an internship at his engineering company once she'd graduated. B'Elanna wasn't even sure what she'd said to that. Everything had just been too overwhelming. She'd been so glad that Tom had stayed by her side throughout, and that she'd always been able to see Chakotay and Kathryn through the crowds, too.

Eventually, though, Tom's dad had taken to the stage and told everyone that they really couldn't keep the caterers waiting any longer. Tom had extricated her from her latest conversation and steered her back to their table. They were sitting with Chakotay and Kathryn as well as a few other people B'Elanna didn't know, including a woman who was apparently Kathryn's sister. B'Elanna felt so stunned that she couldn't really take everything in. It wasn't until dessert was served that she even began to come back down to Earth.

"Hey," Tom said, leaning over. "You OK?"

She nodded, reaching for her water. "I think so."

He laughed. "Pretty crazy night, huh?"

B'Elanna laughed too. "You could say that. Are these things always so insane?"

Tom shook his head. "Nope. I've never seen dinner served so late, for a start. It's almost ten already!"

B'Elanna froze. "What? It can't be!"

"It is," Tom held out his wrist so that she could read his watch. "See? Time flies when you're having fun."

She put down the forkful of cheesecake she'd just scooped from her plate. "I really need to go."

"What?" Tom said. "You can't! You're the guest of honour! Besides, I haven't even shown you around this place yet."

"Tom's right," Chakotay observed. "There's no need to rush off, B'Elanna. There'll be other people who'll want to talk to you, and you should just enjoy yourself."

"No, but- still, we really should go. I mean – it's getting late," she said, "Don't you want to get home?"

Chakotay smiled, raising an eyebrow. "I'm not so ancient that I have a bedtime, B'Elanna. I'm fine."

She looked around for help, but Kathryn wasn't in her seat – she'd gone off to talk to someone at a neighbouring table.

Tom reached out, threading his fingers between hers. "Stay. Please. In fact – why don't you really stay? There are loads of guest bedrooms made up. A few people will end up crashing, they always do. My dad said he'd like to meet you properly and invited you to stay for breakfast. So why don't you?"

B'Elanna shook her head. "Oh no, I don't think – I mean, I have to take Chakotay home-"

"I can find another way home," Chakotay assured her. "I'll get a cab if I really need to."

"You will not, that'd cost a fortune," Phoebe Janeway interjected. She glanced up as Kathryn reappeared. "Kathryn can drive you home."

Kathryn paused in the motion of taking her seat. "Sorry?"

"You brought your car and you never drink much at these things anyway. You can take Chakotay home so the kids can have some fun, can't you?"

B'Elanna watched as Kathryn and Chakotay looked at each other across the table. There was a moment of slight awkwardness in which B'Elanna got the distinct impression that Kathryn would like to say no.

"Uh – yes," Kathryn said, taking her seat. "That's – that's fine. Of course I can."

"But that's – that's a long way out of your way," Chakotay said. "It's really not necessary…"

"Yes!" B'Elanna argued. "It'd take you ages, and-"

"I don't mind," Kathryn smiled. "Really, B'Elanna. Of course you should enjoy yourself. You deserve it. And I dragged you to this thing, Chakotay, it's only fair I make sure you get home."

B'Elanna glanced at Tom's watch again. It was past ten by now. Even if she started the drive back immediately it'd be after midnight before she even reached Maywood anyway. Anyone wanting to buy would have found a different dealer by now anyway. And it was just one night. She'd make up for it tomorrow.

She couldn't even really imagine going back there now. She'd found herself in a different world, so far away from that one that it barely even existed any more.

"Okay," B'Elanna said to Tom, with a smile. "That would be great, thanks."

[TBC]